1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to vehicle information management systems, and more specifically to a vehicle information management system that manages freeze frame data.
2. Description of the Related Art
There is a known vehicle adapted to obtain freeze frame data for a vehicle and store the data in a storage in order to use it to diagnose and repair a malfunction for the occasion of an abnormality caused in the vehicle. Here, the freeze frame data refers to data that represents a state of the vehicle produced based on parameters about the state of the vehicle obtained from a plurality of sensors provided on the vehicle. In such a vehicle, a repair worker uses an external device to read out the freeze frame data from the storage and specifies the type of the malfunction at the time of repairing the vehicle.
There is a known vehicle that obtains freeze frame data and stores the freeze frame data in a storage in order to specify a cause if the engine stalls (see JP-A 08-270494).
In the vehicle disclosed by JP-A 08-270494, freeze frame data is stored in a storage when the engine stalls. If the number of data pieces included in the freeze frame data increases, it would become difficult for a repair worker to specify the content of a malfunction.
In the vehicle disclosed by JP-A 08-270494, a large number of freeze frame data pieces are stored in the storage. Therefore, the vehicle disclosed by JP-A 08-270494 needs a storage with a large capacity.